I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.

While an author is yet living, we estimate his powers by his worst performance; and when he is dead, we rate him by his best.

A man with a good coat upon his back meets with a better reception than he who has a bad one.

He who writes much will not easily escape a manner, such a recurrence of particular modes as may be easily noted.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

It was the maxim, I think, of Alphonsus of Aragon, that dead counsellors are safest. The grave puts an end to flattery and artifice, and the information we receive from books is pure from interest, fear, and ambition. Dead counsellors are likewise most instructive, because they are heard with patience and with reverence.

Works of imagination excel by their allurement and delight; by their power of attracting and detaining the attention. That book is good in vain which the reader throws away. He only is the master who keeps the mind in pleasing captivity; whose pages are perused with eagerness, and in hope of new pleasure are perused again; and whose conclusion is perceived with an eye of sorrow, such as the traveller casts upon departing day.